Iraq Failure is Not an Option

Brave words from a defiant and still arrogant Bush administration.

I was watching Hardtalk on BBC today. I enjoy Hardtalk as indeed the presenters ask tough hardball questions of their guests. No Larry King style pandering interviews on Hardtalk. The presenters have completed their research and are well prepared for the interviews, armed with information and quotes put forth at some time by the guest.

If you don’t want to appear as a complete fool or as being dishonest about your positions you had best be fully prepared prior to appearing on Hardtalk.

The guest on today’s program was the United States State Department’s advisor for Iraq. I apologize to the gentlemen as I failed to jot down his name. He was quite professional although rather abrasive in manner as a defender of his boss, Connie Rice, President Bush, and of the Bush administration’s new policy strategy towards Iraq. 

On several occasions he stated that “failure in Iraq is not an option”. He refused to speculate as to what the US would do if it does fail to accomplish it’s main objective of a free, stable, and democratic Iraq.

Of course, if he values his job he could hardy do otherwise. Those who are not team players and who don’t read from the Bush play book don’t last very long in the Bush Whitehouse.

I couldn’t help but think that the Bush team is still living in dreamland if it truly thinks the new strategy is going to produce different results than other offensive operations it has conducted in Iraq. In the end 21,500 additional temporary “surge” US troops is not nearly enough to suppress a well entrenched and growing insurgency even if the Iraqi army performs reasonably well.

I expect that the Iraqi militias will largely just take a vacation and wait out the American presence. No doubt a few will remain to kill a few, maybe more than a few, of our exposed easy target troops as they go house to house in Baghdad. How would you like to be working and living among the Iraqis in the most dangerous parts of the most dangerous city in the world?

That’s part of the strategy of the Bush new plan, you know. Our troops will clear and hold (move into) very dangerous neighborhoods. Once again our politicians do the “deciding” while our brave troops do the dirty and extremely dangerous work. Our troops deserve better. Mistakes made in Washington by incompetent politicians thinking they are military commanders are killing a good many of them. 

Hopefully, I am wrong but it looks to me that al-Maliki is being set up as the fall guy so that Bush and his wrong headed neo-con buddies can point a finger and say “it’s the Iraqi government that has failed”. For who in their right mind can think that this new strategy can possibly work with a force increase of only 21,500 for a limited period of time?

Having destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure and institutions and completely made a mess of the post war management process Bush looks to be more than ready to blame Maliki and his government for failure to achieve Bush’s perhaps noble but foolish objectives.

A wise man once said “never fight a battle you can not win”. Bush choose the Iraq battle because he thought it would be an easy victory. And of course it was in the military campaign that lead to the fall of Baghdad.

However, Bush forgot about the true definition of winning a war. If you don’t win politically you may win the battles but lose the war. The US never lost a major battle in Vietnam. But winning the war was a Vietcong victory, not an American one.

Failure is not an option? Haven’t I as a Vietnam War veteran heard that one before?

This time are they brave words with real meaning or only last ditch rhetoric before an American buildup then swift withdrawal? We will soon see.          

  

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